FIELD OF THE INVENTION
This invention relates to the plugging in of electrical appliance cords into ordinary building electrical outlets. The device is a flat plug, which allows the cord to lie flat against the wall or floor in which the outlet is situated. The cord will lie flat against the electrical outlet even at the cord's juncture with the plug. The flat plug allows furniture or other objects to be set a mere width of the cord away from the wall. If the outlet is situated in the floor, the flat plug's lack of protrusion is also an advantage, as it minimizes obstruction to the placement or movement of objects. The invention is a unique assemblage of known components and methods. The invention is comprised of plastic or like insulating material and commonly used electrical cords and prongs. The parts are brought together in a specific form to comprise a new device which is this invention.
Electricity is commonly supplied to an electrical appliance through a length of plastic cord enclosing and mutually insulating two parallel wire conductors. The conductors are appropriately secured at one end to the appliance and at the other end to an attachment plug. The attachment plug consists of thicker plstic or like insulating material and terminates with two prongs that are made to mate with two rceptacles in an electrical supply outlet. The outlet is typically installed in a wall and is substantially flush with the surface of the wall.
Conventional electrical attachment plugs have undesirable characteristics. In order to physically enclose the end of the cord and the prongs, and in order to provide an area for the user to grip the plug, conventional plugs have had a size and structure that results in a considerable protrusion from the outlet once the plug is inserted. This protrusion makes the plug susceptible to unintentional disengagements by a moving object and also limits the placement of furniture and other objects in front of the outlet to some distance away from the wall. The protrusion has previously been reduced by having the cord enter the plug at a right angle to the prongs. making for an approximately parallel position of the cord to the wall at the juncture of cord and plug. A variety of such devices have been used or proposed, as in U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,950,036; 1,984,181; 2,425,679; 2,542,609; 2,869,102; 3,137,536; 3,335,395; 3,718,890; 3,747,049; 3,784,961; 3,787,798; 3,803,530; 3,829,819; 3,936,129; 3,950,069; 4,006,958; 4,035,051; 4,284,317. In U.S. Pat. No. 3,474,376 it was disclosed that the protrusion could be reduced still further by having prongs that pivoted within the plug, allowing the plug to swing up and protrude for gripping when being inserted or disengaged, while folding down closer to the wall when plugged into the outlet. A complimentary pivoting of the cord instead is found in U.S. Pat. No. 3,032,740. In none of these earlier inventions is the plug protrusion reducd to the width of the cord as in the within invention. Previous attempts simply to miniaturize the plug resulted in the user being encouraged to pull on the cord rather than the plug when disengaging, in a manner that was deleterious to the attachment of the cord's conductors to the prongs within the plug. In the within invention, the protrusion of the plug is reduced to the greatest useful degree, in a structure that avoids the problem of a user pulling on the cord itself.